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Friday, August 21, 2009

Reflections

My birthday is fast approaching and I will be turning 35. I know many of you will tut tut at me and say I am still a baby, but I am starting to feel older. I have been focusing and thinking about many different things lately. I am about to hit that point in my life that used to feel like it would be the downward slide.... the end of my youth.... the beginning of my old age.... the time when I would be done with the "fun" and would have to "grow up". LMAO at my younger self!

Honestly, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the future lately. Realizing the need for life insurance and taking better care of myself. Planning when I will be DONE with having babies. Wishing for about 4 more hours in each day... just so I would have time to enjoy myself at this age. Wondering what the future holds and how to get myself to where I want and need to be.

Don't get me wrong, I am very happy, in some ways, with the life I have now and where I am as a person and as a woman. I have grown and matured and learned and enjoyed and.... everything! However, I am nowhere near where I feel that I should be at this point in my life. I am trying to balance my expectations with my reality and the scales are tipping the wrong way lately. I really need to reevaluate my goals for the future and get them in balance with the reality of my situation. I am not the same person I was ten years ago! Not even close. The changes in me are positive and wonderful... now my expectations need to match the person I am today instead of the girl that I was ten years ago.

Ten years ago I was a single mom with one child. My little girl had just started kindergarten and I was working three jobs. I expected to be foot loose and fancy free with my child graduated and my life ahead of me by the time I was 38. I just knew that I was never having more children, I never wanted to get married and I was having a great time planning all of the wonderful things I would be doing as my daughter got older. Both with and without her. I would never have to really grow up, I would just be "mom" when I needed to be and still party hard when I was on my own. I was single by choice, loved dating (sleeping around) and planned to never change that!

Ten years later, today I am a married mom to 3 children. My youngest is 2 and will not graduate HS until I am 51 years old. My husband is hard working, frustrating and maddening at times but I love him and am happy to be settled with him. I am a SAHM, mostly by choice, and really have no desire to go back to work ever. The corporate world has no appeal to me anymore. I am living in another state, away from all of my friends, I never go out and my drinking/ partying days are long behind me. (Although I do plan to change that to some extent once the boys are a little older! I miss going out to hear live music!)

Wow. What will the next ten years bring to my life? How will I change? Where will the years take me? It's really enlightening to think about the differences between now and then.

BTW.... I am looking for musical changes in my life as well. I need encouraging, enlightening, affirming music. But not religious. Just spiritual to some extent withjout any talk of god or christianity. Any suggestions?

1 comment:

Isn't it funny the curveballs life throws at you? The older you get the things you value changes. I don't think, well, to me anyways, the way of thinking doesn't really get old, just the body. My thoughts are every bit as random and youthful as they were in my 20's if not more so. I look forward to when the kids are up and out but at the same time dread it. My oldest is already on his own, and I thought I would be doing the Snoopy dance when he left.But I do look forward to having some of my life back to call my own. Even if it is a small bit.:)